Dachra is unique in that it is the first Tunisian horror movie I've seen and particularly in the first couple of acts, that in itself is almost enough recommendation to see the film. It is rather intriguing watching this slow-building, creepy piece, whilst at the same time hearing lines of idiosyncratic dialogue such as "May the blessings of Allah be upon you." Director/writer/and just about everything else except popcorn vendor Abdelhamid Bouchnak, should be congratulated over this, his debut feature. The next best thing I can say about Dachra is that Bouchnak excels at building an atmosphere of eeriness concerning the story of a trio of journalism students, attempting to build a video news story assignment around a gruesome criminal case over 20 years old. Unfortunately in presenting his finished product, one finds that he hasn't been able to restrain himself from overindulging his borrowing of too many tried and tested horror tropes.
Visually, the film initially proves interesting, with Director of Photography: Hatem Nechi demonstrating he is more than prepared to adopt a variety of unusual angles to lens proceedings, using a very much desaturated black-and-white look to underline the stark, bleak nature of the story. But one does eventually tire of massive numbers of shots approached with Dutch angles, with quite a few seemingly deliberately out of focus. Towards the end of the film we even get the good old, nausea-inducing, spinning head in the kaleidoscopic panel, just for good measure. It's almost as if director Bouchnak was apologetic over not presenting a found-footage film and decided to dazzle us with visual tricks as the next best thing.
Character wise it's very much run of the mill. A trio of loud, almost obnoxious and therefore largely unsympathetic personalities who consistently make (really) dumb decisions and thus, unsurprisingly end up in a life and death situation in a rural village with the title name. I should add there is a very late, very contrived twist to somewhat explain their constantly, chaotic, unrealistic behaviour, but I just didn't buy it and it really didn't make a lot of sense. The central protagonist Yasmine transitions from attempting to be portrayed as a plucky, feisty heroine, to an annoyingly, blubbering, screeching damsel in distress, all in the space of a few seconds. And I still haven't worked out how her grandad, who has a tenuous connection to the main thread, knew she was in Dachra. I don't recall her, or anyone telling him.
Narratively, Dachra feels about 15 minutes too long. Stuff occurring in the village just seems to be repeated (literally) ad nauseam. One feels the conclusion is just dragged out too far and this, combined with the illogical actions of our three main characters, brings a frustrating end to proceedings, rather than a frighteningly good climax.
Still, even though I found Dachra ultimately unsatisfying, I would like to see some follow-up work from Abdelhamid Bouchnak. The guy definitely shows some promise. 5.5/10.
